With year one of an expected five-year Japanese beetle eradication effort completed in the Cedar Mill area of Washington County, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is formulating plans for 2018 that go beyond this year’s treatment area. The expansion is not unexpected and ODA is hopeful that community support remains impressively strong.

How often do we find ourselves as citizens complaining when legislators overlook cost-effective ideas and plans that could arguably provide some relief or a solution for a serious societal issue, and instead seem to prefer solutions that add more taxes to the burden already upon weary taxpayers?

The most ambitious and important agricultural survey of all is getting underway in Oregon and the rest of the fifty states as the 2017 Census of Agriculture literally reaches out to every farmer and rancher in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is promising increased cooperation with states in the operation of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to promote self-sufficiency, integrity in the program, and better customer service. To make these improvements, USDA intends to offer state agencies greater local control over SNAP, the safety net program that serves millions of eligible, low-income individuals and families. Specifics on such flexibilities will be communicated to state agencies in the coming weeks.

The American Forest Resource Council (AFRC) today applauded the Department of the Interior’s (Interior) recommendation to modify the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. AFRC President Travis Joseph says the recommendation, if accepted by President Donald Trump, will help correct past overreach and ensure O&C lands within the expansion are managed as Congress originally intended.

Log prices are at record highs, and mills are in extreme competition for logs. The log shortage is leading to maintenance shutdowns, extended Christmas holidays, and one mill closure. Recent trends of lumber, logs, home construction, and housing markets, are compared.

The opioid crisis has struck farm and ranch families much harder than the rest of rural America, a Morning Consult survey shows.

While just under half of rural Americans say they have been directly impacted by opioid abuse, 74 percent of farmers and farm workers say they have. Three in four farmers say it would be easy for someone in their community to access opioids illegally, and just under half of rural adults – 46 percent – say the same. The poll, sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation and National Farmers Union, is a first step in the groups’ collaboration on this issue.